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“Get the IV out of his arm and undress him,” the Doctor ordered brusquely, turning to the cabinets to rummage for the paraphernalia he needed. “Don’t think Ianto would want that,” Owen protested. “And as his doctor, I’m not going to do anything that might traumatize him more than he already has been.”The Doctor tossed a blanket over his shoulder, and Owen barely had time to catch it. “I need to examine him, Doctor Harper,” he said, continuing to collect what appeared to be the detritus of a child’s toy chest. “Down to his pants, if you please. You can cover him with the blanket.”Owen looked at Jack, who was absolutely no help. He just stood there, frowning. “Doctor,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, “are you…” he rubbed the back of his neck. “Is he wrong, like me? Is that why you’re…”The Doctor’s shoulders tightened. Owen decided to busy himself with removing Ianto’s IV, after all. Tosh and Martha helped with his clothing. None of them was used to the pain in Jack’s voice.“Hold up,” came a strident voice that made them all pause. “Why would you be wrong, Gorgeous?”Jack gave Donna a half-hearted smile. “Rose looked into the vortex and brought me back to life. But she accidentally brought me back, for good. I’m a fixed point, now. Unnatural.” He shrugged. “Wrong.”“You… can’t die?” she asked, her eyes wide.“Can’t stay dead,” he clarified, shrugging again.“That’s terrible!” she said. “I’m so sorry.”“Yeah. Thanks.”“So let me get this straight,” she said slowly. The Doctor’s shoulders began crawling up his neck. “God’s perfect bloody gift did a completely crap job of saving your life, and you’re forced to face eternity, through no fault of your own, and this bloody git had the nerve to call you wrong?” Jack just stared. He’d always liked redheads. Forces of nature, redheads. And apparently, willing to stand up to the Doctor. Effectively, too, if the current position of said git’s shoulders was any indication. He gave a reluctant nod. Reluctant because he did still have a shred of pity for his old (or was it former?) friend. But a nod because a very wicked part of him really wanted to see what would happen next.After a beat, Donna rounded on the Doctor. “Oi. Spaceman. What the hell?”“Leave it, Donna,” the Doctor said wearily.“Oh, no you don’t,” Donna was winding up. Martha tried to hide the smirk on her face, still half-guiltily triumphing over the ‘God’s perfect bloody gift’ grenade. “This man is supposed to be your friend, and this is how you treat him? It’s not like it’s his fault.” The Doctor finally faced Donna and drew breath to argue, but she bulldozed over his attempt. “And I don’t care if fixed points make your balls shrivel, or whatever. That’s no excuse.”Owen snorted.“My… That’s not…” the Doctor sputtered indignantly. The Righteous Ginger and the Oncoming Storm glared at one another for several tense moments before he hung his head. “Jack, if I didn’t make my regrets clear before, I apologize for leaving you behind and calling you wrong.”Jack blinked. “I…” he cleared his throat. “Apology accepted.” He added quietly, “Thank you.” Then he looked at Donna, making it clear those words were for her. She gave him a wink then patted the Doctor on the shoulder, letting him know the storm had passed.The Doctor turned back to the counter. “And to answer your question, Jack, yes. He is fixed, as well.”All of a sudden, Jack’s legs did not work. He fell to his knees and let out a sob. “No.”Tosh was beside him almost as soon as he hit the floor. Donna knelt on his other side as Tosh hugged him.The Doctor looked confused. “I thought this would be good news, Jack. Eternity loves company, and all that. You’re fond of him, yes?”Jack looked up at the Doctor, and for the first time in his life he was able to be truly angry with the Time Lord. “You think I would wish this fate on anyone? Much less someone I…” he caught himself, still unable to admit it, much less articulate it.“But you didn’t do this. It isn’t your fault or your responsibility, Jack. You didn’t wish this on him, or cause it. I would think it would be something of a comfort, to know you’re not the only one…” he trailed off frowning. Recovering quickly, he added, “You had no way of knowing what those nuns were up to. Clearly, they didn’t even know what they were up to.”“What did they do?” Jack asked, his voice weak.“I think they had the foetus phasing between the womb and the vortex,” the Doctor said, affixing what appeared to be a lego antenna to a nursery school record player. He used the device to scan Ianto, then beamed the information to the large display screen to the side of the bed. Circular glyphs flowed across the screen in an almost mesmerizing pattern. He nodded as his hypothesis seemed to receive confirmation on the screen. “Yes. And the added ingredient of the trip through the rift, sort of priming the pump, if you will. Doubt this result could ever be duplicated.”“Small favors,” Jack muttered.The Doctor frowned. He knelt down in front of Jack and peered into his face for a long moment. “How are you, Jack? After… everything?”Jack blinked, surprised at the change in subject. “I…” He frowned. “Why?”“Because you endured a year of living hell. Worse than Martha. Certainly worse than me. And you seem to be in really good shape, this current crisis notwithstanding.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve been worried about the trauma of that… But Martha told me how well you seemed.” He nodded. “I’m glad, Jack.”“Ianto,” Jack whispered.“What?”“He’s helped to keep me grounded. Helped me cope, to keep it from all getting to be too much.”The Doctor looked at Jack for a long moment. “I know you have no reason to trust me, but may I?” He reached out a hand tentatively to the side of Jack’s head.“Won’t that bother you?”The Doctor gave a rueful smile. “Don’t worry about that, Jack.”Jack gave him a nod, and the Doctor leaned towards him, a hand at the back of his head as he pressed their foreheads together. Jack felt something calm and cool spread through his head, making him realize how tense and anxious he had been. After a few moments, the Doctor leaned back, shaking his head. “He is very powerful.”“What do you mean?”“He has helped you heal, without even realizing that’s what he was doing.”“Helped how? I mean, other than being there.”“Jack,” the Doctor frowned. “The Master had you captive for a year. You were raped, tortured, and killed, repeatedly.” His eyes widened at Tosh’s gasp and he looked around, noticing the strained silence his revelation had caused. Donna smacked him on the shoulder. “Clearly he didn’t want everyone to know that, you prawn!”The Doctor looked contrite. “I’m sorry, I am. But you should not be this well-adjusted. Not so soon, anyway. The fact that you are speaks to all of the support he has been unconsciously providing. You have almost none of the scarring that you did before I brought you back.”“Scarring?” Owen asked.“What you call PTSD in this time tends to cause significant psychic scarring.” He turned to Jack. “You get nightmares?”Jack nodded. “Yes, but nowhere near as bad as the few weeks after I got back…” he trailed off, his eyes widening.“Jack,” Tosh stared at him. “You dated Ianto for a few weeks before you two got back together, didn’t you?”Jack nodded, trying to take it all in. “So he was helping me even more than I thought he was, and I thought he was helping me a lot.” He sighed and stood up, walking over to the far side of the table and taking Ianto’s hand. “And see how I thanked him.”Owen clapped him on the shoulder. “You know you’ll probably have to break things off with Gwen, now.”Jack jerked as though he’d been slapped. “What?”Owen just looked at him. “I think, once he’s up and around, and what we did to reprogram him kicks in, you’re going to have to choose one of them, because once he’s healthy he’s not going to be willing to settle for sharing you, anymore.”“Owen, what the hell are you talking about?” Jack asked, bemused.Tosh let out an exasperated noise. “Oh, come on, Jack,” she said, her hands on her hips. “Clearly, you’re enamored with both of them.”“Gwen is with Rhys! She just married him!” Jack protested, frowning.“Yeah, and we saw that dance you had, with the bride,” Owen snarked. The strain of the past few days was getting to him. “Hard to say who looked more miserable while you two gazed soulfully into each other’s eyes – Ianto, or Rhys.”Jack frowned. “It wasn’t that bad,” he muttered.“It’s always that bad, Jack,” Tosh replied bluntly. “You don’t even realize how you are, around Gwen. How much you favor her over the rest of us. How much you two feed off of whatever that tension is between you. And Ianto…”She trailed off, looking at the young man. And suddenly she was so angry she could spit. “Ianto would do anything for you, Jack. And he was willing to settle for whatever you were willing to spare, which quite frankly, never seemed to be much. And no, that’s no way to be, and that’s on him, but now we know why he is the way he is, don’t we? But can you even imagine the humiliation he was willing to endure, just to be near you? Can you appreciate just how much he must love you, to be willing to put up with that?”“And don’t think she doesn’t lord it over everyone else, either,” Owen added.Tosh nodded. “God, after Abaddon…”“And you took her with you to face Abaddon,” Owen interjected.Tosh nodded again. “She wouldn’t leave your side. Watching over you like some widow in mourning, while her precious Rhys sat at home, alone. And none of the rest of us could come near you. We didn’t know you’d be back. We only had her word for it. But we couldn’t mourn you or get close to you, even for what solace that would have offered.”“And I tell you what, mate,” Owen added when Tosh seemed to have tired herself out. “If you aren’t shagging Gwen, then that’s almost worse.”“I’m not shagging Gwen,” Jack replied quietly. “Never have.” He sighed, running a hand through his hair and fighting the despair that was rising. He’d fucked it all up, hadn’t he? And now… Now that he no longer had any reason to push Ianto away, Ianto probably wouldn’t want anything more to do with hm.“I won’t lie. I do love Gwen,” he went on. Owen groaned and Tosh gave a sad sigh. “But not like you think. I… I want the life she has. The normal, everyday life. Husband. Flat. A happy life. Someone to grow old with. The ability to grow old. And, at the end of a happy life, death. It’s…” he swallowed. “It’s a torment, the appeal of a life like that.”He blew out a breath. “And yeah, she’s sexy as hell, and I can’t say there hasn’t been a good deal of lust, but I would never come between her and Rhys, because I can’t offer her that life.”“And if something happened to Rhys?” Owen snarked.Jack flinched. “Gwen’s the fantasy. The one that’s safe to love, because you know it’ll never happen. So,” he groaned, realizing the magnitude of his error. “I’ve indulged the fantasy in every way I could, short of damaging her relationship.” He hung his head, ashamed. “She was safe, so I let myself…” He looked at Ianto again. “And you,” he reached up and ran his fingers through his lover’s hair. “You were anything but safe, and so I pushed you away, kept you distant,” he let out a sob, realizing what he had done. “Treated you terribly. And because it was the best you thought you could hope for, you took what you could get. Scraps, you said. Oh, Gods…”Jack leaned closer to Ianto and whispered, “Even if it takes eternity, I will make it up to you, Ianto. If you’ll just give me the chance.” He kissed Ianto on the forehead.As he straightened, he looked from Tosh to Owen, then back at Ianto. “I have buried so many people. A wife. Lovers. Estelle,” he whispered. “And it just got to be too hard. Too much to go through. So I’ve tried not to love anyone I’ve been with. Or not be with anyone I’ve loved. It’s…” he snorted. “Not any easier. Just desperate, really. Only winds up hurting everyone. I’m sorry if my flailing has affected either of you.”Owen looked at Jack. He had only buried one fiancé, and it just about killed him. Watched someone else he could have loved walk away from him. He could not imagine how Jack must feel, enduring it again and again, with no promise of an end to the pain. He was only a couple hundred years into eternity… He shuddered. He met Jack’s eye and gave him a nod. Time for a fresh start, now that Jack could see how what he’d been doing had been hurting everyone around him, in one way or another.Tosh came around the table and hugged Jack. “Jack, we love you. And we understand. We do. But you can’t keep hurting people.” People being primarily Ianto, as it happened. “And you can’t keep letting your actions give others free reign to hurt people.”Jack made a mental note to circle back to that comment. He had never seen Gwen as deliberately malicious, but something in Tosh’s tone made him wonder if there was something he might have missed. Though even he had caught her queen bee tendencies. “Now that I see it, I won’t,” he promised.He released Tosh and as she stood away from him, he looked from her to Owen. “And I took her with me to face Abaddon because…” he sighed. “I knew Ianto would try to face it, beside me. And I wasn’t entirely sure you wouldn’t do the same, Tosh,” he gave her a small smile. “And Owen had just shot me, so I wasn’t keen on having him there.” He smiled reassuringly at Owen’s wince. “That left Gwen, who has a healthy sense of self-preservation.” He shrugged. “Simple as that. I had no other thought about the choice than who would be most likely to make it back, alive.”The Doctor had been reviewing Ianto’s scans, not really listening. At the lull in conversation, he looked away from the screen, then approached Ianto. He pulled back the blanket, staring at the young man’s scars. His finger traced the handprint burned into Ianto’s shoulder. “This is the one who betrayed you,” he said quietly.“Hell, we’ve all done that,” Owen protested quietly.“And not any worse than other friends,” Jack added. The words held no heat, but it was clear that Jack’s forgiveness was not to be questioned.The Doctor nodded. “You never were any good at holding a grudge.” He gently lifted Ianto’s right arm. “There are some older scars under this more recent one,” he remarked. “Where have I seen that, before?”Jack peered over the Doctor’s shoulder. He knew Ianto’s body almost better than his own. He nodded. “Yeah. He doesn’t really talk about any of them, but one time he woke up from a nightmare, rubbing that part of his arm and muttering something about a ceremony.” He shook his head. “Strange, because he wasn’t brought up in any of the old ways, or anything.”The Doctor’s eyes grew wide. “There were pictures. In that file.” He turned to the screen and pulled up the files.“Hey!” Tosh protested.“Don’t worry, Tosh,” Jack smiled. “Mainframe and the TARDIS are old friends, it turns out.”“There!” the Doctor exclaimed, pointing to a picture of Ianto’s arm, before the battle. There were three ropy scars of varying ages. The Doctor pointed to the palest one. “I would say,” he turned and pointed his sonic screwdriver at Ianto’s arm. “Yes. The lightest one happened when he was four years old. The next at fourteen. Then twenty.”“What caused that patterning?” Owen was staring at the screen. “Debris, in all three?”“Pulverized quartz,” the Doctor replied, holding Ianto’s arm, once more. “It is the result of an Alderian forgetting ritual.”“Alderians!” Jack exclaimed. “He said when he was four, he met an angel who told him things.” He frowned. “Wait. I don’t understand.”“I suppose to a four year-old, an Alderian would look rather like an angel,” the Doctor mused. “What happened?”No one wanted to answer. Finally, Tosh said, “His father beat him and locked him in a closet.”The Doctor nodded. “So to protect him, the Alderian taught him how to forget. At least for a while.”Jack shook his head. “So you’re telling me that a four year-old cut himself with a red-hot knife and then rubbed pulverized quartz into the wound?”“He must have been terrified,” Donna muttered.“The Alderian would likely have helped him, made it as painless as possible,” the Doctor said. “It still would have hurt, but not like it did the second and third times.”“Why would Alderians be visiting a four year-old human child on Earth?” Jack asked.“Well, they’re sort of psychic missionaries, aren’t they? They seek out powerful empaths, psychics, and telepaths that have no means of natural support in their home environment, and they teach them.”Just then, here was a low moan, from the bed. Everyone turned to find Ianto stirring.“Everyone try to shield your thoughts, as much as you can,” the Doctor instructed. Ianto’s hands came up to his head, grabbing fistfuls of hair as he turned on his side and curled up, letting out a pained moan. “God,” he gasped. “What?” He tried to look around, but nothing was familiar. “Where?”He gasped again as he was assaulted by a cacophony of sensation. He heard Owen telling himself to stop bloody thinking. He heard Tosh reciting prime numbers and equations and code, and then a Japanese lullaby floated by. He heard someone he didn’t know bitching about needing to be taught how to shield her thoughts. She was a temp from Chiswick, not Mr. bleeding Spock. He heard someone who seemed familiar remind herself of her training as her inner voice seemed to be making its way through water. He briefly thought she needed more practice.But the worst was what he didn’t feel. There were two vast holes in the room. Twin voids that seemed to suck all of the light, sound and sensation from the room. The blankness felt unnatural. Like the void ship at Canary Wharf. Nothing, but then there was screaming, underneath. It was dreadful.And someone was actually screaming. He managed to stop when he realized that it was him. Then he gasped and fell off of the bed when he realized that one of the voids was Jack. He found himself with his back to the wall of whatever room he was in, and he managed to open his eyes. Jack and… the Doctor? …were approaching him slowly. He shook his head, silently begging them to keep their voids away from him. He was terrified that he would be sucked in to one of the black holes and cease to exist.And then suddenly, the pain stopped. He lowered his hands and looked around, realizing that silence had risen, like a shield around him. And then he heard singing. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. “Jack,” he whispered, looking at his lover with something akin to wonder in his eyes. “Do you hear that?”Because he was a pathetic sod who still wanted to share amazing things with the man he loved, even if the man he loved would never love him, in return. But it was so beautiful. And the voids were gone. And the chatter. And the prime numbers. And… Jack looked concerned. The Doctor looked perplexed. He wondered why, but not for very long. The song…He had his back flattened against the wall and was hugging his knees, trying to make himself as small as possible. And the wall seemed to be reaching around him, as though it was trying to embrace him. It was part of the song. It was beautiful. It was soothing and reassuring, and told him that someone would be along shortly to help keep his brain from exploding.That would be lovely...***